I recently came across this social media post from our friend and former guest John Carico, which I thought I would share. (Contact and further links below the content.)

A great many people feel left out of the political process, or feel that voting is simply irrelevant – that it does not serve their or anyone else’s interests – except for those of the powerful and elite. Carico lays out five simple suggestions to influence your community and your world without voting, or in addition to voting, that may well be of much more use: Inform, Organize, Sustain, Dismantle, and Resist. Here’s the text:

“Here are 5 things you can do that mean more and have more impact than voting:
1. INFORM: Write an article exposing an injustice, or spread one to 50 friends, or just introduce a bunch of people to an alternative media source. This is small, but the more people realize there is a problem, the closer we are to solving it.

2. ORGANIZE: start an independent union at your workplace, join a union, participate in a horizontally structured workplace like a co op, or even a commune, the more we use democratic and horizontal methods in our workplace the more we will be used to seeing how they work and will feel more comfortable discussing them as we make them the norm.

3. SUSTAIN: start car shares, guerrilla garden,if people have a need that can be provided for people do it, if you live in a state where you have to break the law to feed people, break the law, don’t block it off to followers of a certain religion or put any requirements for food. food should be free, and the politics of eating is one of the issues that if fixed would essentially topple many other problems we face. remember America, predominantly through restaurant industry, wastes more food annually than the rest of the world could eat! The second part of sustaining is making sure we have land bases by the time future generations come along, meaning we must Stop ecocide so in order to sustain we must also…

4. DISMANTLE: there are institutions and machineries all over the world, destroying as we speak large parts of our ecosystem with very little concern for the after effect, let alone the current effect. indigenous peoples are still being driven off this land, and slavery is more prevalent now than ever.we must take down systems that starve we must do economic damage, not simply opt out. the Boston Tea Party was an act of economic sabotage, and it brought attention to the issue, more than voting could. We must put ourselves on the gears, and if the state won’t stop it but instead offers subsidies and protection to these corporations, then it is up to us to..

5. RESIST: These institutions have brought and will always bring about violence if we do not pay to them to live, meanwhile we have 7 homes for every homeless person. golf courses use as much water as municipal humans. this is theft.These systems which create inequality and are unsustainable are doing long term and short term violence upon us everyday. And any attempt to truly change this will be met with more violence. We have to be ready to minimize damage done to the oppressed classes, and that means resistance to violent behaviors.”

In this installment, the Free Radical Media crew discusses artist Charles Gilchrist’s spiritual journey into the world of art, mandala, and sacred geometry. Charles Leslie Gilchrist was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1940. Showing artistic talents at an early age, Gelchrist started his formal art education at 11, studying under will know portrait and landscape painter Genevieve Ingram Frickle. He later attended Beloit College and the Cleveland Institute of Art. He has worked in many mediums, including commercial photography, and in addition to (and complementing) his artisic life he conducts workshops in Sacred Geometry.

Apparently, in a decade and a half Harriet Tubman is going to be on the twenty dollar bill.

Harriet Tubman was great. Not only did she liberate herself from slavery, she helped other people liberate themselves from slavery, and she also fought for her pay as a Union operative in the American Civil War. This makes her an icon not only for women’s rights and for black rights, but for worker’s rights as well. She was utterly fantastic. She deserves to have her face plastered everywhere, including any kind of paper currency. Excuse me, though, if I don’t get all teary eyed over this “achievement” just yet.

Firstly, let’s talk about the legitimacy of money. The only reason there are images on currency is to add the legitimacy of the State to them. Our money is covered with various symbols tying it to the history of the nation – the buildings of US government, for example, the American Eagle, the various Masonic symbols that were held dear by the early Founders of the United States. Conspiracy theories aside, those symbols were added intentionally to add legitimacy to the currency – as symbols have been added to money since money was first minted. On Roman coins you can see the image of the Emperor, for Caesar was the source of all wealth – so it is now; Government, or the Republic, is the source of all wealth. This is the message that is supposed to be inferred from the various symbols on our money.

Talking about the strange, sad, and suspicious death of Fresno activist John Lang – elaborate suicide? Murder from Fresno police or others? Mental health, activism, and police corruption. We sit down and talk with Fresno journalists James Job, of The Fifth Column, and Brian Sumner of Copblock and Fresno People’s Media, both of whom knew John Lang in some capacity.

The MSNBC Democratic debate got frisky last night, as Secretary Hillary Clinton sought to frame Senator Bernie Sander’s challenge of her acceptance of campaign contributions and speaking fees from big corporate donors as unfair, saying “if you have something to say, say it.” The crowd found her comments worthy of being booed, and Senator Sanders certainly said he wanted to say, and got to the meat of the issue. Check out the video clip here:

As you see here, Senator Sanders took the challenge of the Secretary and used it to discuss the issue of money in politics, begging the question, how can elections be truly open without campaign finance reform? The influence of money in politics can be clearly seen, particularly in the first issue the Senator raised, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 (under the administration of Secretary Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton) which removed safeguards blocking backs from using deposits for investment on Wall Street, which made the Great Recession of 2008-09 possible.

This was one of the most contentious exchanges in a very contentious debate, which is sure to receive a great deal of coverage leading into the New Hampshire primaries on 9 February.

-Eric Scott Pickard is a poet, activist, and artist. He is a journalist with The Fifth Column News and a co-founder of Free Radical Media, and a host of the Free Radical Media podcast.

In her attempt to appeal to youth voters, she has referred to herself as “Chillary” and has asked young folks to describe their student loan debts in terms of emoji s – an openly pandering and insulting gesture on the part of a politician. But her pandering does not extend to deeds, as is evident in numerous issues, not least of these is the legalization or decriminalization of cannabis. Take a look at this article and see what Secretary “Chillary” Clinton really cares about. Hint: it’s her corporate donors. From Marijuana Politics:

“As her lead in the polls continues to dwindle, Hillary Clinton is trying her best to appeal to young voters,who favor her main opponent, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.Clinton goes to ridiculous lengths in her attempts to woo young people into supporting her campaign: she’s whipped and nae-nae’d on Ellen, dubbed herself Chillary Clinton, and even asked college students to describe how they felt about their student debt “in three emojis or less.”

Although it seems that she’ll do anything to get their votes, there’s one thing Hillary Clinton won’t do: champion the issues that young voters care about.

While 77% of young Democrats believe marijuana should be legal, Hillary Clinton is unwilling to support meaningful marijuana reforms. She’s opposed decriminalizing marijuana during her previous presidential run and has given little indication that she changed her position on the issue since. Today, Clinton will only go so far as to support the rescheduling of marijuana to Schedule II, giving it the same legal status as cocaine and methamphetamine.

It’s unlikely that Clinton’s reluctance to embrace marijuana law reform will help her gain popularity among young voters. But her positions on this issue are certainly in line with the interests of a key ally of hers: Big Pharma.

Despite naming the pharmaceutical industry as one of her greatest “enemies,” Hillary Clinton has received more money from drug companies than any other candidate this cycle. Pharmaceutical manufacturers donated more than $340,000 for her 2008 presidential bid – and in just the first six months of her 2016 campaign, Clinton has received over $160,000 from drug companies. To top it off, Big Pharma giants Pfizer and Proctor & Gamble each have donatedbetween $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. And that’s likely just the tip of the iceberg, as Clinton enjoys the support of numerous Super PACs whose finances are notoriously obscure.

Big Pharma has a lot to lose from marijuana reform. The medical properties of marijuana make it a direct competitor with some of their best-selling drugs, namely opioid painkillers like Vicodin and Oxycontin. Recent research suggests that marijuana allows patients to treat their pain with lower doses of opioids and that providing access to marijuana reduces the prevalence of opioid use. Additionally, marijuana cannot be patented, making it difficult for drug companies to profit off its sale.

In other words, pharmaceutical companies cannot get rich off of marijuana – but marijuana could severely impact Big Pharma’s profits.

With Hillary Clinton in their pocket, pharmaceutical companies expect their candidate to protect their bottom line – and that’s exactly what she’s is doing. There’s no doubt that Clinton wants to earn the support of young voters, but she’s unwilling to do that at the expense of her long-standing alliance with the pharmaceutical industry. Hillary Clinton can dab all she wants, but on marijuana, she’s sided with Big Pharma, not with the young voters she wants to seduce.”
Secretary “Chillary” Clinton is an establishment politician with nothing to offer to a new generation of people who desire fundamental change and an end to the status quo, which only benefits the powerful. Let’s let her “chill” in her retirement and look towards the progressive future.

-Eric Scott Pickard is a poet, activist, and artist. He is a journalist with The Fifth Column News and a co-founder of Free Radical Media, and a host of the Free Radical Media podcast.